PITCHFORK (US): A contemporary classical composition of arresting beauty. Ambitiously remaking a 2002 ambient-glitch album with clarinet, vibraphone, cello, and other acoustic instruments, New York composer Joseph Branciforte discovers new depths in a minimalist classic. Sometimes, if you set out to do the impossible, you actually achieve it. (read more)

SPIN (US): A stunning acoustic re-imagining. Every sound is intentional and thoughtful, rewarding the patient listener with slow unfolding of textures. (read more)

THE WIRE (UK): Branciforte’s vibes and Madison Greenstone’s clarinets are most responsible for the music’s glowing pulses and woody textures, but it’s the ultra-clean mix that connects Sti.ll with its digital predecessor. In each iteration, music of indeterminate mass lures the listener into a realm of insubstantial yet endlessly variable sound. (read more)

ALL MUSIC GUIDE (US): Like the original album, this is a carefully sculpted work that requires attentive listening in order to reveal its intricacies. Sti.ll turns the original work into something more delicate and handcrafted while losing none of its essence or focus. (read more)

FUTURISM RESTATED (SP): A stunning piece of translation. Branciforte reimagine[s] Deupree’s 2002 album Stil., an austere masterpiece of digital microsound, as a work for acoustic instruments—clarinets, vibraphone, cello, double bass, percussion, etc.—recorded without looping or sampling. (read more)

LOOP (CL): I would dare to say that it will mark a milestone in avant-garde music. (read more)

DAS FILTER (DE): It is not often that a new recording or interpretation touches me as much as Sti.ll does. (read more)

INACTUELLES (FR): A masterpiece. (read more)

FREQ (UK): Like the other side of a mask or some other inversion—demonstrably the same yet uncannily dissimilar. What this book isolates, like an overpowered floodlight, is how an acoustic version of an electronic piece is constantly and consistently different. And so the listener is lead into a world of getting their ear-hands all around the distinct shapes of digital vs. acoustic instrumentation. (read more)

BORING LIKE A DRILL (UK): The four pieces display incredible craft and ingenuity in embodying the uncanny sheen of electronic sounds while also adding the depth and microcosmic details that distinguish acoustic music. (read more)

UTILITY FOG (AU): An amazing achievement from Branciforte and Deupree. The performances here are superbly poised, mimicking the repetition and—yes—stillness from Deupree's album, while being richly rewarding listening in their own right. (read more)

EXPOSÉ (US): Sti.ll serves to highlight the conceptual closeness of ambient electronic music to modern minimalist composition, bridging two seemingly distant realms and sounding quite natural. Branciforte has accomplished something very special here, both conceptually fascinating and eminently listenable. (read more)

CHAMBER MUSIC MAGAZINE (US): The arrangements are at once faithful and revelatory, illuminating the bustling particles of sound that constitute Deupree’s repetitive loops. The musicians perform what amount to small sonic miracles. (read more)

BRAINWASHED (US): Sti​.​ll is a one-of-a-kind deep listening experience that will probably feel fresh to me forever, as I am constantly finding new shades of beauty as I notice more details and small changes. (read more)

A CLOSER LISTEN (US): Counterintuitively, an album centered around the concept of stillness turns out to be a celebration of flow. The greater one’s attention span, the more one is rewarded. (read more)

WNYC’S NEW SOUNDS (US): Clarinet, flute, vibraphone, cello, lap harp, and percussion deployed in the service of preserving the textures of the digital loops and granular processing of Deupree’s original. (read more)

CREATE DIGITAL MUSIC (US): When it came time to transcribe Taylor Deupree’s seminal 2002 electronic drone album Stil. for acoustic instruments, everything from technical software details to how we think about music and physical artifacts came into play. (read more)

THE ARTS DESK (UK): Comparing the two versions of the opening track “Snow/Sand” is illuminating, Branciforte even using finger clicks and untuned percussion to reproduce some of the original’s electronic sounds. As a feat of transcription, it’s remarkable. Crucially, it sounds marvelous too. (read more)

IGLOO (US): Tonality is far more noticeable here, especially with the arrangement that builds more and more dense layers as it goes, so the track is not just hypnotizing thanks to its repetition, it’s almost spellbinding due to how beautiful it is. (read more)

BLOW UP (IT): The opening Snow-Sand is seraphic like four very slow measures of a Miles Davis ballad punctuated by the brilliant percussive idea of “brushed” paper. The final piece and title track is wonderful, a marshy harmonic monotony rippled by liminal melodic rivulets. (read more)

SILENCE AND SOUND (US): Blurring the sensory boundaries between machines and humans. Vital. (read more)

AMBIENT BLOG (NL): Remarkably, the arrangements stay true to the original tracks, maintaining the same sequence and durations. Thus, it becomes particularly intriguing to juxtapose both albums and observe how Deupree‘s ‘exploration of extreme repetitions and stillness’ translates into the realm of acoustic performance. (read more)

THE LETTER (UK): Produces an unexpected vibrancy, in contrast to the original's quiet dormancy; like the emergence of new life in early spring. (read more)

THE NEW NOISE (IT): Translating a fundamental piece of the glitch movement into a totally instrumental symphony. (read more)

DATA.WAVE (US): Branciforte and musicians manage to retain the character and mood of Deupree’s early masterpiece. At the same time, it’s not a formal reproduction of electronic music by acoustic instruments, but an independent neo-classical and ambient work, full of different sound textures, minimalistic rhythmic elements and beautiful atmospheres.

taylor deupree

Taylor Deupree is an accomplished sound artist whose recordings, rich with abstract atmospherics, have appeared on numerous record labels, and well as in site-specific installations at such institutions as the ICC (Tokyo, Japan) and the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (Yamaguchi, Japan). He started out, in the 1990s, making new noises that edged outward toward the fringes of techno, and in time he found his own path to follow. His music today emphasizes a hybrid of natural sounds and technological mediation. It’s marked by a deep attention to stillness, to an almost desperate near-silence. His passion for the studio as a recording instrument is paramount in his work, but there is no hint of digital idolatry. If anything, his music shows a marked attention to the aesthetics of error and the imperfect beauty of nature, to the short circuits not only in technological systems but in human perception.